Group - Print decisions

• The original images we are using are generally loosely tied into the video, so that there is some continuity between the two, but the images are general enough that they could be from other music videos to songs in the album. The only image which directly ties into our video is the panel with the fangs and the blood which connects to the more gory and gothic visual motifs of the video.
• Broadly we tried to keep with the tone of the album in designing the digipak as the high saturation of the colours and the striking nature of the image in each panel feed into the title "The Shocking Miss Emerald", but the softness, colour saturation and strong blur effects of the colour scheme supports Emerald's bold "femme fatale" femininity as a star quality in her meta-narrative.
• The choice to airbrush the images used in the digipak and the advert was made to make the images look much cleaner and more refined, which is fitting of both the 1920s period and Emerald's meta-narrative in which she displays level of superiority and dominance over her audience, and her tidy and spotless appearance is significant part of this.
• The warm colours both differentiate the digipak from the video while simultaneously maintain some continuity with the video. The softness of the colours is exclusive to the digipak as the light in the video is typically quite sharp with heavier shadows, but the saturation of the colours and the colour palette in the digipak is closer to the music video. The softness of the colours also help blend each of the digipak panels together.
• Keeping the focal point of each image central in each panel of the digipak adds an extra layer of consistency that makes the composition of the digipak as a whole look collectively tighter and more refined.
• There were a number of visual motifs we experimented with when deciding on the more nuanced visual elements of the digipak, such as ornate borders which took the form of detailed half squares which filled each corner of the digipak panels. Initially there was some dispute in the group over whether these cluttered the image and made it ruined the simplicity of the image, but we decided in the end that they were simply too large, and by reducing their size we keep the minimalist layout of the image along with the detail that is appropriate of the period setting.
• We also used an overlaying layer to bring out some of the finer shadows on some of the images in the digipak such as the boa. However often-times this did not work for the whole image so we decided to exclude from certain parts of the digipak and only use it in very specific places. Typically we removed the effect from Eleanor's skin because it inconsistently muddied the colour and didn't compliment the clean and refined style we were aiming for.
• The font and colour scheme of reds, yellows and blacks will be consistent across both the digipak and the advert to keep with the 1920s period setting.
• For the advert we decided to use the image of Eleanor with the band as this felt like a logical extension of what was in the digipak, allowing the target audience to see Emerald with her band. However it also removed the detail that each panel of the digipak brings to Emerald, as each one is a close up of a different part of her body. This ensures that the digipak still has enough additional detail and content to differentiate it from the advert and justify its purchase if it were sold to the target audience